Cotton

Most of the cotton grown in India is genetically modified BT-cotton. It had been developed in order to reduce lepidopteran pests, mainly the bollworms. Yet, the BT protein does not protect the crops from other pests, so that still many insecticides have to be applied. In addition to that, BT-cotton is always also hybrid-cotton. This causes a great reliance of farmers on Monsanto and co. for the seeds. Even non GM-cotton varieties are often hybrids, so that the farmers cannot recover seeds for sowing in the following year.

bioRe®, the enterprise for the production of organic cotton aims at strengthening farmers' families by means of organic farming and thus creating a better livelihood. Organic farming is expected to be not only environmentally friendly, but also fair and socially responsible. bioRe® extends advisory services to all its farmers. bioRe® also engages a lot into research with the aim of gaining scientific knowledge on organic agriculture in order to better advise farmers and extension staff, and in order to explore agricultural innovation to further increase productivity of organic farming systems. 

And here is where my work comes in. The research that I will conduct during my internship is part of the PTD, the participatory technology development. This means that investigation reveals the needs of farmers and then trials are set up in order to test different possibilties to encounter these needs. Next to an on-station trial, there are also on-farm trials as a validation under farmer's conditions. Workshops with the farmers are then organised where they are asked about their opinion, how they evaluate the trials and what they could imagine to apply in practice. 

My focus will be on suitable pest management strategies in organic farming. The very precise question that I will try to answer is yet to be defined. There is now a trial on different spraying intervals and different organic pesticides still going on which Claudia, a student from HAFL, had set up. I am taking over these trials now and will continue to collect data, do pest observations and the sprayings. In addition to that, I will do a profound research on the options for pest monitoring, e.g. with sticky traps or pheromone traps. 

A first impression of the trial fields at the research site

an open cotton-fruit:

Gossypium hirsutum variety: The hirsutum-cotton varieties can be recognized by their leaves which are mostly only 3-lobed and larger. The flowers are pointing upwards and their fibres are longer, which makes it possible to obtain a thin thread. Gossypium hirsutum is originally from tropical America.

Gossypium arboreum variety: The arboreum-varieties usually have 5-lobed and smaller leaves. They grow higher and their flowers are hanging downwards (not clearly visible here). Their fibre is shorter which means that more fibre is needed to obtain a thread which won't tear apart, it gets thicker. Gossypium arboreum is native to India (tropical Asia).